Michigan Ends 43-Year Hunt for Convict

If Jerry Bergevin is alive, he can now rest easy. Michigan has officially stopped looking for the burglar, who escaped from a prison camp back in 1969, the Detroit Free Press reports. The state's Department of Corrections has granted Bergevin an administrative discharge on account of his advanced age—he would be 80 by now. "He's home free, I guess," his granddaughter, 36, says; like many, she assumes he's dead.

Bergevin was serving time after breaking into a Flint drugstore in 1962 when he asked to be transferred from state prison to a prison camp that offered a dental technician program. Back then, the camp "probably had a single fence around it with barbed wire on top," a Department of Corrections spokesman says. "It's possible in '69, it had no fence." One day, Bergevin disappeared—and hasn't been heard from since, though rumors about his whereabouts persisted through 2009. Michigan is now left with 24 escapees, who went on the lam between 1957 and 1988. (More Jerry Bergevin stories.)